


Sleepless

by leiascully



Series: The FBI's Most Unwanted [30]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Partnership
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 04:01:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4464704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It would have been different, if Scully had been with him.  He couldn't quantify it, but he knew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepless

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: 2.04 "Sleepless"  
> It would have been different, if Scully had been with him. He couldn't quantify it, but he knew.

"I can't talk right now, Mulder," Scully said. "My class is starting in ten minutes. I don't want to go in there and find somebody tied up with a catheter again."

He looked out the cab window. "But you'll autopsy the body, won't you, Scully?"

"Did you ever consider I might have plans tonight?" she asked.

"Do you?"

She sighed. "If I wanted somebody to bring me dead things, Mulder, I'd get a cat."

"I thought girls loved corpses," he told her. 

She laughed softly. "I have to go. I'll call you when I've finished the autopsy."

"I'll make sure they stick a bow on it," he said.

\+ + + + 

Every time he turned around, Krycek was there in his face. 

It hadn't been like that at all with Scully. She'd trailed behind him at first as he'd purposefully outpaced her, but even when she'd confronted him, it hadn't felt this obtrusive. Scully had been intended as a handicap, to weigh him down like a Derby horse until his sprinting slowed and his spirit broke. Instead she'd coaxed him to greater feats. Krycek, for all his seeming eagerness to work the case, made Mulder skittish. Something about Krycek didn't smell right; no one had wanted these assignments except Mulder, and never enough to get the jump on him. 

Partners had to lean on each other. He remembered Reggie telling him that, back in the early days, when he'd been as green as Krycek was now. But Krycek wasn't his partner, not exactly, and Scully already supported all his weight. He couldn't transfer that burden to Krycek, not after two years with his hand on Scully's shoulder. He was accustomed to her resistance. He couldn't lean on someone who wouldn't push back. Talking to Krycek was like skidding on black ice when he expected dry roads. Mulder didn't know how to put the brakes on. They stumbled through the case, reasoning half in advance of their data, and before they could stop themselves, everything was over. Gerardi was dead. Cole was dead. The sleepless were at last resting in peace, or as close as they would ever get.

It would have been different, if Scully had been with him. He couldn't quantify it, but he knew.

He thought of the man he'd met, how Mr. X (as good a name as any) had emphasized his separation from Scully as a goal of whoever was pulling the strings. They giveth and They taketh away. It didn't matter. He and Scully were bound to each other. They'd made a vow at some point, without speaking: for better or for worse, in madness or in sanity.

\+ + + +

"Do you trust him?" she asked, blue eyes steady. "After all of this?"

"I only trust you," he said. 

"But you want to believe him," she said.

He shrugged one shoulder. "You know me, Scully. I don't think he's the one who trashed your office."

She smiled. "Be careful, Mulder. They know how far you'll go and what you'll do to ensure the reopening of the X-Files. They're offering you something you want, but they have no reason to actually give it to you."

"They offered me you," he said.

"You didn't want me," she said with a little smirk.

"Only until you introduced yourself," he said. "Scully, somebody put me on this case. I need to know who."

"I think the real question is who put Krycek on this case?" she said. "Maybe your friend at the FBI has friends of his own."

"Our friend," he said. "Reinstatement of the X-Files must be undeniable. That includes both of us."

"Just watch your back," she said. 

"That's what I have you for," he told her, grinning at her.

"Until one of us gets reassigned to a field office in Arkansas or South Dakota," she said.

"I won't let that happen," he said, startling himself with how fierce his voice sounded. 

"We don't always get to make these choices, Mulder," she reminded him.

"They haven't broken us yet, Scully," he said. "They can assign us anywhere they want, but you'll still be my partner."

"As long as you're ready to incur the costs of shipping all your mystery corpses to Little Rock," she said, sighing. 

"I'll expense it," he said. "Only the best for the FBI. If Skinner or anybody else is going to hand me cases, they deserve to pay for the privilege."

"Maybe you can get a punch card," she said. "Slice ten, dice one free."

"That's the kind of innovators the federal government needs," he told her.

"Maybe," she said, squinting up at him, "but I'm not sure we're the kind they want."

"At least somebody still thinks we're the right people for the job," he said. 

"As long as it's for the right reasons," she said. 

"Skeptic," he said warmly.

"We can't deny our true natures," she told him, her eyes laughing.

"I wouldn't deny a cup of coffee right now," he said. "Scully?"

"Yeah," she said. "Let's get out of here."


End file.
